Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Google IPO Problems Surface

Posted by michael on from the here-come-the-lawsuits dept.

manavendra writes "The BBC is reporting that Google has admitted it may have breached stock market laws in the US, while CNET says Google may have run afoul of securities laws when it doled out millions of shares to employees and consultants over the past three years, according to a document filed Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission."

3 of 235 comments (clear)

  1. Why sell them back? by idesofmarch · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Maybe I am missing something, but why would anyone be willing to sell their shares back at a fraction of what they would fetch on the open market?

  2. The real story is the media interest by Everyman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Google mentioned this snafu in their original April 29 SEC filing, and said that they would offer further details on the rescission before the IPO.

    Now they have, and the media plays it like it's some sort of scoop.

    The real story here is not that Google screwed up (that happens regularly), but that the Google teflon is wearing thin in the media.

    You can only play reporters as puppets for a few years, and then they get tired of your spin and start biting back. There will be a lot more negative press in the coming months.

  3. Isn't an overvalued IPO "evil"? by astrashe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've always loved google, but this sort of bugs me.

    I think I can predict the flames -- the market decides what the value is, I don't know that the stock will go down any better than the investors know the stock will go up, the google people deserve to get rich, and all of that.

    But I remember the dot com days (as do most people here, I'm sure). I think that we're going to see a massive transfer of wealth between unsophisticated small investors who are doing more speculating than investing, and the sharpies running this IPO.

    It seems to me that the geek community has never come to terms with exactly what happened in the dot com days, and how dishonest and damaging a lot of the financial shenanigans were. A lot of guys who were ring leaders -- guys like Jeff "profits don't matter" Bezos -- are still respected and admired.

    You can say a lot of bad things about MS, and I'd probably agree with most of them. But they never screwed their investors the way that almost every open source IPO did. That's always something that's left out when people talk about the software morality play here.

    I don't see why people see this as a good thing for the tech industry. The only way IPOs will be good, over the long run, is if the investors make good returns. With this valuation that's impossible. People are going to get screwed, just like the old days, and it will just revive the bitter taste in everyone's mouth, and make the next IPO that much harder.